The Indian Ring (12 page)

He again grabbed his bow and cougar-skin quiver full of cedar arrows. Joshua camouflaged his face using a piece of charcoal and headed on foot back toward Hartwell's camp. Wearing his moccasins, he would approach from the thick woods on the far side of the camp.

He carefully scouted around, moving through the thick vegetation and watching the men who rode for Hartwell until he found his target. Buffalo Lombardi was a monster of a man, one of the largest men Joshua had ever encountered. He had spent almost two decades as a mountain man all over the West, but several murders had sent him back east for the past two years. He yearned to get back out west, but figured he would bide his time and make some great money working for Robert Hartwell. Although he had never even spoken to the tiny bad man, Hartwell helped keep him in the Midwest.

Hartwell knew full well about Buffalo and the stories surrounding the giant. Buffalo grew up in the eastern part of Kansas near Topeka. He was full of wonder as a boy and loved the outdoors and spent many days honing his stalking skills with red and gray squirrels. He learned early on to carry pebbles in his pocket. When he made a squirrel scamper up a tree, it would always go on the far side of the tree trunk. So, Buffalo would toss several pebbles beyond the tree at once. The noise would alarm the squirrel and it would run around to his side of the tree, where he would pick it off.

Even as a boy, he was known as Buffalo, and the lad hunted squirrels all the time. When he was fourteen, he was taller and much stronger than any of the men in his town. He dreamed about moving out west and becoming a
mountain man. He finally did go at seventeen and grew up quickly, but he got in fights with two different miners in mountain mining camps and killed both with his bare hands. Buffalo spotted a wanted poster on himself and that sent him back east until things could cool down.

Now Buffalo spotted some movement in the thick forest directly behind him. Unlike some of the killers in the gang, he relished the opportunity to go after whatever or whoever was moving. If it was Strongheart, that would be even better. Buffalo had never lost a fight in his life using his bare hands. Even against knifes. In the close proximity of the dark woods, a gun may not even be practical.

Joshua Strongheart wore a grin on his face. His goal was not to use his guns or knife, but to beat this behemoth with his hands and feet and, more importantly, his mind. As the man looked for him, Joshua waited patiently in his hiding place and thought back to his youth.

The one thing Joshua remembered most about the only father that he'd ever known was how good the man could fight even though he was much smaller than some of the giant buffalo hunters and mountain men he'd had to arrest. Dan had taken a section of log weighing more than two hundred pounds, shaved the bark off of it, and the two thick branches that extended out for two feet, which he had also shaved and sanded, rounding the ends, so they would resemble thick arms. Joshua would watch the man for hours on end tossing the log backward, sideways, and various combinations of those directions working on numerous grappling moves.

Joshua thought back to a very familiar scene that really influenced him as a youth, seeing his stepdad in action. The incident, which initially made him fear for Dan, had impressed the young dark-skinned cowboy. Some of these big men that came into town to blow off steam looked like
they were related to the buffalo they hunted they were so large, and some were very nasty and mean.

Three behemoth mountain men were drinking heavily in the saloon and soon were slapping customers around. One of the customers came to fetch Dan, and Joshua happened to be with him. He tagged along behind.

Thinking back again, Joshua had watched Buffalo Lombardi from a distance with his spyglass, and he was even larger than any of these three giants.

Each of the men had murdered before but was never caught. Dan walked fast with long, easy strides. He, with Joshua following, walked briskly to the family's mercantile store. Joshua was very curious. Dan walked up to Abby, Joshua's mom. and she forced a kiss. Joshua grinned knowing this man hated to show affection, but his ma would never let Dan get away with that with her. He walked over to a shelf with clothing and grabbed a pair of socks and then walked to the hardware supplies along the far wall and grabbed a large wooden ax handle. Next, he went to a large jar of marbles and started pouring handfuls into one of the long boot socks.

Joshua was still perplexed.

“Got these marbles, Abby, pair of socks, and this ax handle. Put them on our account. Gotta get back to work. See ya.”

Curious, she gave a half wave as he strode out of the store.

Tying a knot into the end of the marble-filled sock while he walked, he stuffed it into the right pocket of the long tan duster he was wearing. Next, he slid the handle of the ax up his right sleeve, but it stuck out. He pulled it out, put it under his left arm, inside the long coat, squeezing it along his body with his left elbow and forearm. Without hesitation, he stepped up onto the wooden boardwalk and into the saloon.
He spotted the three giants in front of the bar where one had lifted a woman of pleasure up in the air, taking his own pleasure at the very abject fear clearly showing on her painted face. That man looked at the others and laughed, a deep, booming guffaw seemingly echoing from a deep cavern.

“Lookee, boys,” he mused. “A teeny little lawman come to arrest us!”

He laughed at his own joke and was joined by the others. Dan never broke stride and walked straight up to him. Off-balance, the brute dropped the red-haired tart on the rough-hewn bar with a thud, and tried to gather his thoughts. He did not have time. The sock filled with marbles came out of the right pocket of Dan's duster, swung around one time, and struck him with a louder thud on the left side of his jaw, breaking it, and dropped him to the floor unconscious. Now, Dan had one giant behind him and one in front of him, and they immediately closed in, but Dan had already untied the sock and with his left hand let the marbles fall to the floor behind him. That brute saw them too late and stepped on them, going down unceremoniously on his back with a thundering crash. In the meantime, Dan's right hand grabbed the ax handle and raised it high, taking hold with both hands now facing the third giant in front of him. The brute's eyes opened wide as he saw the massive piece of wood come down toward his head, and his eyes crossed, looking up before rolling back as he fell on his back unconscious.

The victim of the marbles had now regained his footing and was about to grab Dan from behind, when Dan shoved the ax handle straight backward into the man's solar plexus and heard the wind leave him with a rush. Dan spun around and swung it upward like a butt stroke with a rifle, and it caught the three-hundred-pounder under his chin, and his head snapped back with the force, as he, too, went down out cold.

Dan grabbed the woman and helped her down off the bar, saying, “Lucy, isn't it about time you consider a different profession?”

She was so amazed and still frightened, she could not even speak. She just fluttered.

Dan said to the frightened, but now very relieved, bartender, “Fred, get some men and a buckboard, and get these three down to the jail before they come to.”

Fred said, “Yes, sir, Dan, and thank you very much.”

Joshua was bursting with pride over the coolheaded way Dan had handled that crisis.

As if he were reading Joshua's mind, Dan put his hand on the young man's shoulder, spun him around, and said in a low voice, “When you are outnumbered, keep them off-balance, and do the unexpected. Come on to the office with me.”

They walked out the door, Joshua half running to keep up with the stern lawman's long stride.

Joshua said, “Pa, how come you didn't just pull your gun and arrest them?”

Dan said, “They kept their knives sheathed and guns holstered. Remember what I told you. If you draw a gun, use it. Don't pull it just because you're afraid.”

Joshua said, “I ain't ever seen you afraid.”

“You just did, son,” Dan said, giving a slight grin, which hardly anybody ever saw from him, “You see the size of those three grizzlies?”

Strongheart grinned as he once again recalled that story and the lesson learned.

“Keep them off-balance,” Strongheart whispered.

Besides the men he had already killed, the most effective way to psychologically terrorize the Hartwell gang was to pick out their biggest, toughest brute and kill him with his bare hands, or at least make it seem so in their minds.

Buffalo made his way with a bit of stealth and speed for his enormous size. He came through a stand of scrub oaks, and immediately found himself in a thicket of pines with branches all the way down to the ground. He kept coming closer and closer, and was now within an arm's length of the large oak tree that Strongheart was hiding behind. The giant man knew something was wrong, and he just stood there breathing heavily and looking around.

In an odd twist of irony, without realizing it, Strongheart used one of Buffalo's own tactics. He grabbed several rocks and, careful not to expose his arm or make noise, he tossed them down the hill behind Buffalo, just like the big man had done hunting squirrels as a boy. Hearing the rocks hit, Buffalo moved quickly to hide behind the big oak tree.

Joshua had hidden about fifty marble-sized rocks in the empty sock. He started swinging the sock from way back, and it came around catching Buffalo squarely on the jaw, judging by the sound. The big man's knees buckled and he heard his jaw break, before he temporarily went unconscious for a few seconds. The fact that he came to shortly after was a testament to his enormous size and capacity to take such a hard hit.

He shook the cobwebs out of his head and clawed for his gun, but Joshua's second swing caught him on the gun arm as he was drawing. He screeched with pain, dropping the gun that look like a derringer in his massive hand. He doubled his fists and swung at Strongheart, who grabbed the first with both hands, pulled, and swung the man toward the downhill side. Because of his own momentum, he went flying down the hill and crashed into a maple tree with a large trunk. The air left him in a rush, and Joshua punched him twice on the end of his jaw, sending a front tooth flying from his bloody mouth. Now Buffalo's head was really spinning, and Joshua knew he had to end this before they got close
enough to the camp to be seen or heard. As the behemoth rushed forward, hate and rage in his eyes, Joshua swung the loaded sock again and the bulk of it crashed into the side of Buffalo's face, immediately swelling the eye shut and shattering the cheekbone. It also hit the man across the temple, and in Buffalo's head everything went black. He felt his body hit the ground, but then there was nothing.

Looking at the face of the corpse, Strongheart saw that it was badly beaten up. He also saw exactly what he wanted. Anybody looking at the bruises and marks could believe they were made by a fist, instead of a sap made of a sock filled with small rocks.

He used the lasso he brought with him to fashion a harness for the big man's body and for his own shoulders, and he started dragging Buffalo back toward the camp. He got close to the camp and saw a few men moving around engaged in various activities.

Joshua had to come up with a plan now to lure the men away. He spotted three small deer on the far side of the clearing where the camp had been built. The clearing was long and narrow, maybe sixty to seventy yards wide in most places. The three does had come out of the trees on the far side, and were grazing on grass. Joshua waited patiently until all three were close together. He raised his bow and drew an arrow. Normally while hunting he would never take a shot this far away, but he felt one of the does would have to sacrifice its life to save his own. He took careful aim and released the arrow. It sailed over the backs of all three and embedded itself in a tree trunk. His goal was to shoot a deer and attract attention, but now all three bolted, their big white tails waving from side to side like nature's metronome as they bounded away from the arrow and toward the camp, then veered to their left and headed up the valley. This had an even better effect than expected, as the
men in the camp thought that Strongheart must have been over there and spooked the deer. The five men witnessing this, ran toward the trees, guns in hand. Joshua quickly dragged the big body back to his sleeping spot, then placed the sign he'd carefully lettered on top of the body. He quickly melted into the trees and made his way back to a safe spot to watch them from with his telescope.

One of Hartwell's minions summoned him, and surrounded by his personal entourage, he moved cautiously toward the assembled men now moving into the trees at the edge of the clearing. He and his bodyguards stayed back and watched from the camp for an hour, until the men emerged from the woods. The last one found Strongheart's arrow stuck in the tree trunk, and when he told the others, they finally realized that he had been on their side of the clearing all along. They headed back toward the camp and briefed Robert Hartwell. Now, all eyes focused on the trees on Joshua's side of the little valley.

Hartwell was very bothered seeing big old Buffalo Lombardi napping in the middle of the day with this hunt for Strongheart going on, It was just out of character for the big man, who always wanted to be in the midst of any action.

“Buffalo!” he hollered. “Get the hell up!”

Buffalo did not move, and Hartwell nodded toward him. The closest man ran to Buffalo's area, where he lay head on his saddle. He stared at the giant's form. The man turned, looking as if he had seen a ghost and signaled Hartwell and the others to come over. They all briskly walked to the body and gathered around the body and stared at Buffalo's lifeless corpse and the letter on his chest.

It read: “So far, you have seen what I can do with a knife, my bow, and my hands. I am better with my guns. Leave Hartwell today or tonight when he is not looking, and I will
spare your life. Stay with him or wait until tomorrow and die. Strongheart.”